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Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

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It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

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It is a haunted game, where each player is measured by the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.

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That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

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And I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending.
Or maybe there's no obligations now.
Maybe I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland.

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So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore.
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night.
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright;
Oh and that's alright with me.

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She laughs for a minute about the shape I'm in
Says, "You be the sinner honey, I'll be the sin."

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I read the body count out of the paper,
And now it's written all over my face.
No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter,
Sometimes that's just the most comfortable place.

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The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can.

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And one day we will die,
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea.
But for now we are young;
Let us lay in the sun,
And count every beautiful thing we can see.

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In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
Tomorrow or today.

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"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

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Like a bird you swooped down.
You edged closer, then off you flew.
It was lucky you didn't stay there with me.
For, I could have died looking at you.
I could die looking at you.

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I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw,
It alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder.

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Out of all those kinds of people,
You got a face with a view.

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Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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There was this line by charlie parker, probably worth remembering:
"if you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
Chances are you'll never be reborn.

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Fate isn't what we're up against;
there's no design, no flaws to find.

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If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

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Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

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And as for my inflammatory writ?
Well, I wrote it and I was not inflamed one bit.
Advice from the master derailed that disaster;
he said "Hand that pen over to ME, poetaster!"
While across the great plains, keening lovely & awful,
ululate the last Great American Novels -
An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit.

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I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

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I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine.